


Stay

by sickdreamsaremadeofthis



Series: Stay with Me [1]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men: Apocalypse, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: First Class - Fandom
Genre: Charles is distracted, Cherik - Freeform, Erik is stupid, Erik's mindless violence, First Kiss, Fix-It, M/M, Realization, Romantic Friendship, indirect love confession, mention of other characters including Azazel and Peter (Pietro)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 13:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7803286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sickdreamsaremadeofthis/pseuds/sickdreamsaremadeofthis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years with Charles lost... because Erik was stupid?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write Cherik for days now, and it felt like years. Just so much emotion since I FINALLY watched X-Men: First Class (I'd seen the other movies but due to a major surgery and a long, hard recovery at the time that First Class came out I had somehow managed to skip over the one that made the Erik/Charles love SO obvious). 
> 
> This story was inspired first by the Cherik video 'Stay' that was put together by McFassy GO! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2ndwDTFEtQ and then by the full-length version that had been inspired by that one which was put together by Sujin Nam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gTbv_ioNGU
> 
> Those videos helped me sort through all of the overwhelming emotions that the Cherik 'feels' had been stirring, so I could finally put down in words one of the stories I've been wanting to tell.
> 
> More notes at the end, and you may find them important. Ha! ;)
> 
> Thank you for reading.

Stay

It rained that day. He left, and the rain came pouring down, and it felt like mockery because his heart was hardened beyond tears. He went outside once Azazel had taken them away, to their own 'safe' place--was anyplace safe without the one who had come so close to healing him? He went outside and stood in the pouring rain, and he thought of the look in Charles' eyes as he'd cradled him in his arms on the beach, and he let the raindrops slide down and off his face. It was almost like crying; close enough to it for it to be cruel.

 

He fought his war, for a time, and soon enough ended up accused of a crime he had not committed and sentenced to solitary confinement for life. Had he expected Charles to come to his defense after what he'd done to him? Had he hoped for a visit, a phone call? For Charles to just come walking in and wrap his arms around him and say, as he once would have said, "Everything is alright"?

Charles never came, and he never had a right to hope, and he was resigned to it for ten years before he and his two strange new friends came to break him out. Still, it turned out, he'd hoped... deep down, where he thought he'd managed to hide the pain of it even from himself. The look in Charles' eyes, though, when he finally saw him. Hatred, and anguish. Charles, who had told him, "You're not alone," now looked at him like he finally saw him for exactly the monster that he was. Standing there facing him, his face numb from where Charles had struck him, he realized that outside of solitary confinement at last, he was indeed alone, and more than he ever had been.

If not Charles, there could be no one else. Without Charles, he **was** alone.

"You abandoned me!" It struck him to the core. But he couldn't deny it. He had abandoned Charles. He had ruined everything.

 

It had always been so easy, once he'd gotten started. Death and destruction, moving the world around him to shape it into a weapon. Charles, crushed again beneath his lack of mercy, his dark murder of a soul.

"Goodbye, Erik." No love in that voice. No love in those eyes.

Oh God, what had he done?

 

He left again. Found a place to hide, and then someone to hide inside. Every day he woke up next to her there was the stirring of something being very wrong and the quiet echo that so often resonated in his head. It was so very quiet, so very brief before he blinked it away like a ray of light that was just too bright. 'Charles...'

She gave him a child though, and in that he finally managed to stay put for one place long enough to make an honest try at 'normal' and put the needs of others before himself. All too soon, it was ripped away from him, and the taste of bitter destiny in his mouth was all too familiar.

Nowhere to go but to the demon who beckoned him then. Leading him to Charles, it felt like he was coming to retrieve something stolen, and he pulled Charles to him like it was his right--and it was, there was no hesitation, no second thought; Charles belonged to him. If Erik wanted to grab and pull him near, then that was exactly what he would do.

The ensuing nightmare passed in a blur of grief that clouded his every thought. His wife and daughter--his only child--were dead. What was there left to live for? Charles was wrong, he'd always been wrong about Erik even after seeing inside of his head and knowing firsthand how truly beyond redemption he was. And whatever this monster calling itself 'Apocalypse' wanted with the one who belonged to him alone... it was the end of the world, wasn't it? Everything died, and with it love. He pulled metal from the earth, pulled metal to him as he'd done for so long in an effort to stop the end of the world that was happening **inside of him**.

And suddenly, it was like waking from a nightmare. The anguish that he fought to bury, if only briefly, was still a merciless ache in his chest, but he could see clearly now. Charles, and those few left who had stood with them when there had still been a 'them', and some new brothers and sisters who had seen the light within Charles--they were standing together, and as he blinked away the fog of apathy and despair, just as he'd been blinking away the memories of Charles all those years upon waking... he woke up now and he knew--he couldn't let him die. No, not Charles. Not after everything that had happened.

He fought that monster, determined to give his last breath during that fight, if only he could stop the death of the one person he still loved in this world.

 

In the aftermath, he stayed long enough to help rebuild the school. Charles asked him, in that passive, so-very-respectful way that he couldn't help but interpret as Charles not wanting him enough--after all, Charles had told him once, he **could** stop him if he wanted to but he wouldn't... he always held back, didn't use his power over him like he could if he really needed the same things as Erik, and by going against his powerful nature wasn't Charles denying **him** as well as everything they were supposed to stand for?

He smiled and walked away from that indirect plea as though it didn't kill him all over again to do it.

 

The very next day though, he went back, as though he'd been called. The whisper rising from his subconscious to the forefront of his mind upon waking... "Charles." It was a persistent and damning thing, and he had to put it to rest once and for all before he could move on again. How could he bury something when it was still alive, when the heart was still beating?

He went back. He pushed through the throng of students who all came to a halt as they saw him, caring not for their wary glances. He walked into Charles' path and looked him in the eye, and with a voice rough from decades of unshed tears, asked him directly, "What do you want? What do you want from me, damnit!"

Charles, infuriatingly calm as ever, and yet with this look in his eyes that was so much the look Erik had seen as he'd held him in Cuba... it tore at his heartstrings with such force, and he couldn't take it anymore, he'd been fighting it for so long. "You know what I want, Erik. The question is, what do you want? And will you let yourself have it?"

"I told you to stay out of my head." Erik said, jaw clenched. "All of this time, you never let me have a moment's peace. Couldn't do me that small bit of courtesy, could you? Day and night, relentless. Planting thoughts in my head... even from halfway across the world... you couldn't just let me have my life!" Fury, and something else powerful and achingly raw, ebbed through him in waves.

Charles suddenly looked genuinely bewildered. "Erik..." He said slowly. "What are you talking about? I haven't been in your head. I told you I wouldn't. I only ever used my powers on you when you explicitly allowed it."

A thought of those few seconds years ago during the incident with the stadium briefly flickered through Erik's mind, but he brushed it away. That wasn't important and it wasn't what he was talking about.

"Really." He ground out furiously. "Then you wouldn't happen to know what I was thinking when I woke up this morning, would you?"

Charles shook his head for emphasis, his confusion suddenly so obviously honest.

Troubled, Erik wavered for a moment. It hadn't been Charles' doing, something he'd planted somehow? All of that time... had it really been Erik himself? The torture, the memories, the yearning? It wasn't from Charles, it had always been **him**.

Shocked, and angry with himself for being so foolish and blind, he barreled on ahead. "Go on, then. Show me. What you wanted to, yesterday when--when you didn't--ask me to stay."

Charles' eyes widened with understanding, and he hesitated mere seconds that seemed like still years more before Erik's mind was suddenly flooded with images. It took his breath away, the washing over him of memories that was practically an assault for how much emotion came crashing along with them... memories of talking and laughing together, late into the night as they shared between them a growing dream that they'd understood to be the same; memories of standing just a little too close, lingering a little too long, hands brushing when logic did not demand; memories of his name spoken in Charles' voice, his chaotic and agonized mind soothed and led by Charles' strong, compassionate psychic touch, his eyes exactly as Charles had seen them gazed into as though they held all of the answers in the world and the shining truth of everything Charles had ever wanted; and the ones that clutched at his heart the most violently--himself reminded of what it had been like to see Charles through his own eyes; his smile, the passion in his every look and movement, and how those impossibly blue eyes had looked at him with impossible heartbreak on the beach as he lay helpless in Erik's arms... saying goodbye with the shedding of a single tear that he just couldn't hold back as...

"It was my world too." Charles said softly, out loud.

as Erik's whole world was wrenched away from him viciously with the reluctant severing of that invisible cord between them.

Breathless, Erik stood, trying to recover as Charles quietly retreated from his mind. Just like that goodbye that had haunted him ceaselessly, dogging his every step no matter where he ran to or what he threw his energy into... Just like that moment... there were once more tears standing out in Charles' eyes.

And the puzzling and the hurting and the **wanting** was finally just too much, as it all clicked into place--understanding. Over twenty years late, but it was there. The dawning of the light inside of Erik, that he'd only ever imagined could exist inside of Charles because that's the only place he'd ever seen it, ever felt it.

"Oh, you darling fool. You never did know your own mind, did you?" Charles breathed, a single tear falling as emotion--both his and Erik's--overwhelmed him again at last.

He had to clear his throat, catch his breath, and the words were so hard to find. "Why... didn't you **tell** me?" He asked, anguished.

"Because, my friend," Charles laughed incredulously with laughter that sounded full of only pain. "I couldn't bring myself to believe that you were really so stupid."

"Stupid?" Erik repeated stupidly.

He'd lost years of Charles... **years**... because he was stupid?

With a sharp intake of breath, his features set like steel, he strode toward Charles rapidly, and when some of the students moved toward Charles protectively, he swept his arms out, easily knocking them aside with a tug at the metal on their clothing. So close to Charles now, but he felt a breeze and glimpsed a silver blur from the corner of his eye for the tiniest fraction of a second, and he was ready for that too, his hand already outstretched for where he knew his last obstacle would be waiting--the boy with silver hair who could move faster than bullets--Erik's hand clutched at his shirt at exactly the right time, by some glorious miracle, and Erik threw him aside with all of his strength, and was finally free...

free to lean in and look deep into those blue eyes so familiar to his own. He wiped the tear away and, throwing all of his emotion into Charles' mind at once, said to him gruffly, "Ask me. Say it for real, Charles. Just tell me, so I can hear it."

Charles smiled, more tears falling as he breathed in with a combination of his own anguish and the sweet, sweet relief that he'd denied them both for so long. "Stay."

Erik didn't hesitate--he would never hesitate again. "Always." He said furiously, as he leaned in and, at long last, kissed the man that he had loved with all of his heart since before his heart had been able to remember what love was.

The kiss was long and deep, angry and unrelenting. It wasn't long enough. When their lips parted, the look that they shared was something that Erik finally understood, and he embraced it with every part of his mind, with every fiber of his being.

There was a hallway full of shocked faculty and students staring at them, but Erik took no notice although Charles, ever aware, glanced with a sheepish look to the side while pressing his lips together as though to savor the feel of Erik's lips on his own.

 _We should talk in private, friend_. Charles' mind said to his.

"I don't care." Erik said, dismissive of the rest of the school, dismissive of the entire world as he kissed Charles again, vowing to himself with the vengeful spirit that only he could contain, that he would never again abandon his own heart. His Charles...

He would stay.

 

 

_My whole life waiting for the right time_

_To tell you how I feel._

_Know I try to tell you that I need you._

_Here I am without you._

_I feel so lost but what can I do?_

_'Cause I know this love seems real_

_But I don't know how to feel._

 

_We say goodbye in the pouring rain_

_And I break down as you walk away._

_Stay, stay._

_'Cause all my life I've felt this way_

_But I could never find the words to say_

_Stay, stay._

 

_Alright, everything is alright_

_Since you came along_

_And before you I had nowhere to run to_

_Nothing to hold on to I came so close to giving it up._

_And I wonder if you know_

_How it feels to let you go?_

 

_You say goodbye in the pouring rain_

_And I break down as you walk away._

_Stay, stay._

_'Cause all my life I've felt this way_

_But I could never find the words to say_

_Stay, stay._

 

_So change your mind_

_And say you're mine._

_Don't leave tonight_

_Stay._

 

_Say goodbye in the pouring rain_

_And I break down as you walk away._

_Stay, stay._

_'Cause all my life I've felt this way_

_But I could never find the words to say_

_Stay, stay._

 

_Stay with me, stay with me,_

_Stay with me, stay with me,_

_Stay, stay, stay, stay with me. - "Stay" by Hurts_

**Author's Note:**

> \- Yes, Charles cares that Erik just threw his students around like meaningless objects... at least, he WILL care once he gets hold of himself. And Erik will be scolded.
> 
> \- Yes, Erik will care that he basically abused his own kid without knowing it... that also seems like a 'duh', but just for the sake of clarifying and in case the sequel doesn't get written.
> 
> \- Where lowercase letters appear at the start of a couple of paragraphs, that is a style choice, not a grammatical error.
> 
> \- I know it says this work is part of a 'series' but don't hold me to the sequel. I do get busy. Reviews and encouragement help though, and they mean a lot.
> 
> \- I left a lot out about the complexities of Charles' and Erik's characters here, such as how they feel about homosexuality (with respect to Erik's traditional, orthodox Jewish upbringing and Charles' own likely atheistic or agnostic--not sure which yet--beliefs) and other factors that would affect them having an established relationship. This short fic was basically an explosion of emotion from them, and from me basically being like, "Out with it already!" Future works will likely address some very important details that I left out here.
> 
> \- Once again, thank you for reading.


End file.
